The Cambrian Lines

Based at Oswestry, the Cambrian Railways provided the bulk of railway transport in an area of land that stretched from west Shropshire to the Welsh coast between Aberystwyth and Pwlheli. Although the company lost its independence to the Great Western Railway in 1922 – before the creation of the ‘Big Four’ the following year – the lines retained a distinct identity through the GWR and BR eras, right up until the end of steam and beyond. Drawing upon a superb range of photographs, this book explores the Cambrian lines in the two decades after the end of World War 2. These were the years when the outside-framed ‘Dukedog’ class 4-4-0s worked out their final years and when the transition from Western to London Midland control saw many of the traditional classes disappear.